The present disclosure relates generally to failure notification in a computer network, and more specifically, fast remote failure notification.
As the Internet becomes a multi-media communications medium that is expected to reliably handle voice and video traffic, network protocols must also evolve to support quality-of-service (QoS) requirements such as latency and reliability and to provide guaranteed available bandwidths. Meeting the demands of businesses and consumers, however, also requires that bandwidth and latency guarantees continue to be met when failures occur. Protection mechanisms become necessary to ensure that services are restored within a sufficiently short time, e.g., 50 ms, such that the user experience is not affected.
To address this requirement, various “Fast Reroute” techniques have been developed that provide rapid reaction to a failure such that the user experience is preserved. In a network employing Fast Reroute, traffic flowing through a failed link or node is rerouted through one or more preconfigured backup tunnels or alternate paths. Redirection of the impacted traffic occurs very quickly to minimize impact on the user experience, typically in tens of milliseconds.
A drawback with conventional systems is that when a node does not support fast failure notification, technologies such as Fast Reroute cannot be deployed.